Zika virus (ZIKV), a mosquito-borne flavivirus, has re-emerged and spread across the Western Hemisphere in the past year. First isolated in 1947 from a sentinel rhesus macaque in the Ziika Forest region of Uganda [1], ZIKV had remained in relative obscurity for many years until outbreaks in the Pacific islands and then the Americas in the past decade [2-4]. A large outbreak started in Brazil in late 2014 and is a growing public health concern [5]. Currently, active transmission has been reported in 58 countries and territories globally. About 20% of ZIKV infected individuals develop symptoms, which mostly resemble symptoms caused by other arboviruses, such as dengue viruses or chikungunya virus. Unlike these viruses, however, ZIKV causes congenital defects, including microcephaly [6,7], and is also associated with Guillain-Barré syndrome in infected adults [8,9].